Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen Read Free Page A

that wound. Briefings, inspections, diplomatic duties, petitions, advice given and listened to, arguments with budget committees both in tandem and, a few times, in opposition—their workload After Aral was scarcely changed in substance or rhythm from their workload Before. And, slowly, the civic scar had healed, though it still twinged now and then.
    The inmost wounds…they’d scarcely touched, or touched upon, in mutual mercy perhaps. She would never count Oliver as less bereaved than herself just because his grief was more circumspectly hidden—though she had more than once, as she forced herself through what had seemed the endless gauntlet of public ceremonies befalling the Viceregal Widow, envied him its privacy.
    It was only their former intimacy that seemed taken away, buried with its nexus point. Like two planets left to wander when their mutual sun vanished. It was time, perhaps, for a renewed source of gravity and light.
    The server returned, and she was spared from her further internal…dithering, yes, she was dithering, by the minor distractions of placing their orders. When they were alone again, Oliver relieved her of her quandary by remarking, “If this is to be a working lunch, someone was behindhand in supplying me with the agenda.”
    “Not work, no, but I do have an agenda,” she confessed. “Personal and private, which is why I invited you here on our so-called day off.” She wondered what signals he’d read in her invitation that brought him here in comfortable-if-flattering civvies, instead of his uniform. He’d always been alert to nuance, an invaluable trait back when he’d first been assigned as Prime Minister Vorkosigan’s military secretary in the hothouse political atmosphere of the Imperial capital back on Barrayar. We are far from Vorbarr Sultana. And I’m glad of it.
    She took a sip of water, and the plunge. “Have you heard anything about the new replicator center we opened downtown?”
    “I…not per se , no. I am aware that your public health efforts continue.” He blinked at her in his most amiable I-am-not-following-you-but-I’m-still-listening look.
    “My mother back on Beta Colony helped me headhunt an exceptional team of Betan reproductive experts to staff it, on five-year contracts. They’re teaching Sergyaran medtechs in the clinic, as well as serving the public. By the end of their terms, we expect to be able to hive off several daughter clinics to the newer colonial towns. And, if we’re lucky, maybe seduce a few of the Betans into staying on.”
    Jole, unmarried and unlikely to be so, smiled and shrugged. “I’m actually old enough to remember when that was new and controversial technology, back on Barrayar. The younger officers coming on take it for granted, and not just the Komarran-born ones, or the ISWA girls.”
    The server arrived with their wine—a light, fruity, well-chilled white, produced right here on this planet, yes!—and she fortified herself with a sip before continuing forthrightly. “In this case, the public good is also a personal one. As, um, Aral may never have mentioned to you, and I don’t recall I ever did either, during one of the dodgier times of Aral’s regency—before you came on board—we took the precaution of privately sequestering gametes from each of us. Frozen sperm from him, frozen eggs from me.” Over thirty-five years ago, that had been.
    Oliver’s steely blond brows rose. “He told me once that he was infertile, after the soltoxin attack.”
    “For natural conceptions, probably. Low sperm count, lots of cellular damage accumulated over his lifetime. But—technology. You only need one good gamete, if you can sort it.”
    “Huh.”
    “For reasons more political than either biological or technological, we never went back to that bank. But Aral made sure in his will that the samples’ ownership was mine absolutely, after his death. On this trip home for Winterfair and the annual Viceroy’s Report, I pulled them